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Grand Urban Gardens Sprout Across North America

Urban agriculture is blossoming across the continent, benefiting communities in formerly blighted areas.

Urban gardens were once mostly small-scale outfits staffed by volunteers, but a new
generation of urban farmers is kicking cultivation into high gear.

Will Allen, founder of Milwaukee-based Growing Power,
said necessity is driving the success of large-scale urban gardens.
People want to know that their food is fresh and healthy, and that it benefits their
communities.

“The industrial food system hasn't worked and fed
the world like we said it was going to,” Allen told Healthline. “Young
people look around and see people sick and family members dying of
cancer, diabetes, and obesity, and they realize we have to change our
ways.”

In Detroit, a plan to create a tree farm on hundreds of
empty parcels of land is like taking lemons and making lemonade. A
for-profit company called Hantz Farms Detroit is on the verge of closing on about 1,500 lots it is purchasing from the city for an average of $300 each.

By
this time next year, maples and other hardwoods will be planted in
neighborhoods where hundreds of foreclosed, often-vandalized homes were
razed.

Meanwhile, crops already are growing in the poorest areas
of downtown Vancouver, Canada. There, space is at premium. In one case, the
city leased the top two floors of a 10-story parking structure to a
company called VertiCrop, which is growing leafy vegetables at high yields and selling them in the surrounding neighborhood.

The
once-full parking garage has fewer cars now that more people bicycle to
work. VertiCrop's high-tech greenhouse grows food in rows of tall,
rotating trays that resemble clothes racks at the dry cleaners.

Sadhu
Johnston, deputy city manager of Vancouver and the city's so-called
“green czar,” told Healthline that many cities in North America have
changed their laws to make it easier to grow food in town. “Food is
really the gateway drug to sustainable living. It gets people interested
in health, nutrition, and local issues,” Johnston said.

North America's Biggest Urban Orchard

Michael Ableman, founder of Sole Food Street Farms
in Vancouver, said the biggest problem urban areas face is contaminated
soil. His company, which employs former drug addicts and people with
mental illnesses to help grow crops, has developed ways to grow massive
amounts of food in easily movable containers.

Ableman's most
recent farm has sprouted on the site of an old gas station in one of
Vancouver's poorest neighborhoods. It contains 500 fruit trees, making
it the largest urban orchard on the continent.

“I've been
involved in this movement since the early 1980s, when there weren't many
people putting the words 'urban' and 'agriculture' in the same
sentence,” Ableman told Healthline. “There were challenges not only with
getting people's heads around what this looked like, a farm in the
city, but from a regulatory perspective and permitting, it was very
difficult.”

Some cities have provided grants or other financial
incentives for urban farmers. Still, one of the things keeping Hantz
Farms from growing food, as opposed to trees for wood, is that the city
of Detroit won't allow it. Michael Score, president of Hantz Farms, said
he expects that will change as the trees breathe new life into blighted
areas. The company is already maintaining half of the parcels it is
planning to buy and has been well received by neighbors, he said.

“Right
now, we need to plant crops that neighbors can live with,” Score told
Healthline. “In the countryside, if you need to spray the plants, you
spray the plants. If you need to use manure, you use manure. In the
city, you have to account for the close proximity to neighbors.”

Having
good soil is a problem, too, Score said. And growing in stand-alone
containers similar to those Sole Foods uses in Vancouver is
cost-prohibitive on such a large scale.

Sustainable and Profitable?

Allen
says urban agriculture really does make business sense. “Non-profits
can't survive anymore on writing grants alone. It's about developing a
business model," he said.

Growing Power operates 160 hoop houses
on 25 acres of land, and the energy-efficient hoop houses are designed
for maximum yields. The organization has a diverse marketing scheme,
selling its food to low-income people, to the middle class at local farm
stands, and to chefs at top restaurants. Everyone pays the same price,
Allen said.

Growing Power also makes money by training people
from communities across the country on how to bring an urban garden to
their town.

“Years ago it was very hard, with all the zoning
ordinances in place, but not anymore,” Allen said. “It also has been an
educational process by thousands of youth organizations teaching kids
about small gardens. These kids are adults now.”

He also credited
First Lady Michelle Obama for going public a few years ago about her
1,200-square-foot food garden on the White House lawn.

Allen
suspects that eventually urban agriculture will become as standard as the
fire hydrant, and just as important for public safety. “We have to grow
healthy people; otherwise, people will be sick or obese. This new food
system can create thousands of jobs in hundreds of different categories.
Engineers, architects, truck drivers—every profession out there is
connected to food.”

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